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Sphere Fluidics Limited Wins $7 Million Investment for Development of Cyto-Mine® - The Unique Single Cell Analysis System

CAMBRIDGE, England, Feb. 10, 2016 /CNW/ - Sphere Fluidics Limited has just secured $7 million in the First Close of its new investment round. The latter will complete shortly with even more funding already in the pipeline.

Dr. Frank F. Craig (CEO) said: "Sphere Fluidics Limited has recently successfully developed an alpha-version of its single cell analysis and characterization system (Cyto-Mine® for the biopharmaceutical discovery and development market. We have also convinced several leading biopharmaceutical companies to fund development of this system - indicating the global potential of the product. This new funding will used to develop the manufactured version of Cyto-Mine® (see image below) and enable its commercial launch later this year. This system is transformational for the Biopharmaceutical market."

The funding round was led by an Asian Corporate investor but also included investment from existing angel investors and UK angel funds such as 24Haymarket, Park Walk Advisors and London Business Angels. "We were very pleased to have ongoing investor support and also extend our business activity and fund-raising success to Asia," said Dr Frank F. Craig.

"This new instrument can accelerate and enable the discovery of diverse antibodies from primary cells and find high producer cell clones. It can perform millions of novel single cell assays per day, dramatically improve biopharmaceutical discovery, offers up to 100-fold improvements in monoclonality and enhances recovery of single cells compared to conventional techniques," said Dr. Marian Rehak (R&D Director).

"The instrument provides a revolutionary change for this market, offering unique technical features for single cell analysis and benefits including significantly reduced capital, consumable and operational costs," stated Dr. Rob Marchmont (Commercial Director).

Dr. Frank F. Craig (CEO) said: "Commercialization of Cyto-Mine® represents a successful step in our strategy to now sell high value systems. Our initial target market is biopharmaceuticals but later we will also extend sales into other growing global markets including: synthetic biology, single cell therapy engineering, microbial analysis (e.g. antibiotic-resistance screening and microbiome studies) and single cancer cell diagnostics. It is an exciting time for Sphere Fluidics, our investors and customers."